Location: Batam City, Indonesia

Design Team: kousou

Area: 300 m²

Year: 2025

Photography: Kung Photograph

Design Features: Kousou renovated Itsumo Dessert Shop in Batam, Indonesia, within the familiar local typology of the ruko, or shop-house. The building had originally been designed by the client and housed the first location of the brand. Rather than adding conspicuous decoration, the project introduces a white outer shell, natural materials and carefully moderated light, creating a quiet counterpoint to the city's fast, utilitarian commercial environment.

The street elevation reveals very little of what lies inside. A spare white geometry and limited openings sit among the continuous shopfronts, while the entrance is compressed and drawn inward. Moving from the bright street into the grey-black interior becomes a deliberate sensory shift, redirecting attention from traffic and signage toward material, sound and changing light.

The building's most consequential inheritance is a two-storey void linking the second and third floors, with the existing concrete frame retained at its centre. A new structural frame is inserted within the old one to reposition the floors and reorganise seating, bar and stairs. What might have remained an obstruction becomes the spatial anchor: a rough concrete cage that repeatedly enters the view and makes the building's earlier life legible.

A skylight equal in length to the void isolates the sky and carries daylight deep into the narrow shop-house. Responding to the client's wish for rain inside the building, the architects named this space the RAIN VOID. Concealed gutters around the skylight and courtyard guide water through the interior. Two unstable street-facing walls had to be removed and rebuilt during construction; their inner surfaces were lined with local bankirai hardwood, intended to register sun, rain and the humid climate over time.

Black dominates the interior without becoming a single theatrical coating. Stone, metal and timber were selected for their inherent darkness or capacity to accept stain, then layered with andesite, dark boards, slender railings and raw grey concrete. Differences in grain, reflection and tone create depth. The renovation thus becomes a new reading of Batam's shop-house: the old structure remains visible, while tropical rain is invited across the conventional boundary of the envelope.

Design Team: Kousou is led by architect Yoshiyuki Kawazoe, with its main office in Tokyo and an overseas base in Jakarta. Born in Kanagawa in 1979, Kawazoe graduated in architecture from the University of Tokyo, studied in the Netherlands and is now an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. His work moves between architectural practice, urban-regeneration research and writing, encompassing libraries, museums, hospitality, retail, education and public space.

The practice believes that good space can enrich both individual lives and society, and seeks forms of architecture genuinely suited to their places. Its projects often connect design, culture, engineering and local knowledge while identifying value already embedded in existing structures and environments. Its portfolio includes the University of Tokyo General Library, the Indian Institute of Technology Central Library, Shikoku Mura Museum and Bōyōrō, and its work has received the Tokyo Architecture Award Grand Prize, the Architectural Institute of Japan New Face Award, the BELCA Award and Good Design Awards. Itsumo Dessert Shop was designed by Kousou, built by Room Studio, with lighting by ERRE Luce.